Laura Marling is returning with a new album, Patterns in Repeat, which will officially arrive on October 25th via Chrysalis/Partisan Records. Today, along with the announcement, she’s released the album’s lead single, “Patterns.”
Written, recorded, and produced by Marling at her home studio in London, Patterns in Reverse will be her first full-length release since 2020’s Song for Our Daughter. That album saw her write to a fictional daughter, but now, the new album will explore themes of family following the birth of her actual daughter in 2023.
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Speaking about the creative process as a new parent, Marling explained that she wrote songs while bouncing her daughter in a bouncer. “For the first time in my life, I was able to gaze into another human’s eyes as I wrote,” she said, citing the feeling as “one of the very finest that life has to offer.” Ultimately, the “banal constellation” of families “dominated the writing of Patterns in Repeat.”
Pre-orders for Patterns in Repeat are ongoing. Read Marling’s full statement about the album below.
The lead single, “Patterns,” welcomes listeners to the world of the album, with a warm sound carried by a gentle, plucking acoustic. Overtop, Marling croons sweet melodies with introspective lyrics about the ever-repeating rhythms of life. Watch the lyric video for the single below.
In support of the release of Patterns in Repeat in October, Marling will perform intimate live residencies — first at London’s Hackney Church on October 29th and 30th, and November 1st and 2nd. Then, she’ll head to New York’s Bowery Ballroom for shows on November 11th and 12th. Tickets go on sale on July 19th via Ticketmaster, after which you can grab tickets on StubHub (for her London dates, get tickets here). Check out the full list of dates below.
Laura Marling’s statement on Patterns in Repeat:
Over the course of nine months, I had happily prepared myself for the fact that my life as a songwriter would be put on hold while I adjusted to life as a new parent. How delighted then was I to discover that for the first few months of a baby’s life, you can bounce them in a bouncer and play guitar all day. For the first time in my life, I was able to gaze into another human’s eyes as I wrote. Of course, new parents feel like they discovered that feeling – one of the very finest that life has to offer, of looking into the eyes of your child and feeling the enormity of the picture as a whole, the enormity of a precarious life, celestial, fragile and extraordinary, taking its place among the comparatively banal constellation of a family. This banal constellation seems to have dominated the writing of Patterns in Repeat – the drama of the domestic sphere, the frail threads that bind a family together, the good intentions we hold onto for our progeny and the many and various ways they get lost in time. So much complexity in the banal, the caged, the everyday.
Being as I am, 34 years old, now 15 years and 8 albums into a life in song, I am unable to escape the fact that each record has served as a time-stamped chapter of my life (though some have appeared more a premonition). Now, here we are, following a youth spent desperately trying to understand what it is to be a woman, I am at the brow of the hill, with an entirely new and enormous perspective surrounding me.
Patterns in Repeat Artwork:
Patterns in Repeat Tracklist:
01. Child of Mine
02. Patterns
03. Your Girl
04. No One’s Gonna Love You Like I Can
05. The Shadows
06. Interlude
07. Caroline
08. Looking Back
09. Lullaby
10. Patterns in Repeat
Laura Marling 2024 Tour Dates:
10/29 – London, UK @ Hackney Church
10/30 – London, UK @ Hackney Church
11/01 – London, UK @ Hackney Church
11/02 – London, UK @ Hackney Church
11/11 – New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom
11/12 – New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom